Page:Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society - Volume 1.djvu/156

120 Dr. Norupven’s Account of the Banyan-Tree. quoted below,* he wrote about fifty volumes on the History of Animals, or, as we should say, on Zoology alone: and we know from other sources, that he also composed a work on Plants,t or on Botany. . In the latter, the mention of such a production as the Banyan-tree, could not have been omitted. It is our misfortune to lament, that of these interesting writings comparatively very little has been preserved to us. Of the work on Animals, a certain portion remains; and there, indeed, also exists a book on Plants, attributed to Aristotle, but unquestionably spurious. His re- searches, however, may be traced in authors that wrote after him, and who enjoyed the advantage of the information which he had gathered. Thus Plinyt declares, that the greatest part of what he himself has written on zoology, is taken from the works of Aristotle ; and we may justly con- clude, that Theophrastus, an author to whom our attention will be presently directed, has built on the same foundation.

Whatever passed through the hands of Aristotle, on subjects of Natural History, must be allowed to have had a value beyond that which any other writer could have given it, both on account of his acuteness and intellectual superiority, and of the channels, through which his information was de- rived. It is not possible to conceive, as has before been intimated, that among the natural curiosities of India, of which, through the interposition of Alexander, he obtained a knowledge, such a phenomenon in the vege- table world, as the Banyan-tree, should have escaped him; more especially, when it is considered, that even writers, as will be shown afterwards, who merely employed themselves in recording the military and political achieve- ments of Alexander, could not forbear noticing that remarkable object. _

Hence it appears probable, that Theophrastus, who was the favourite and most distinguished pupil of Aristotle, and who succeeded him in the Lyceum, as head of the Peripatetic school, gained, in substance, what he has left recorded of the Banyan, from the literary stores of his master, to + [epi puta a B', de plantis libri duo, two books on plants. See the Life of Aristotle, by Diogenes Laertius, in the Ist volume of Buhle’s edition of Aristotle’s works, p. 22. Also his life by an anonymous author ; ib. p. 64. + Nat. Hist. VIII. 17. Vol. II. p.79. ed. Bip.—quinguaginta ferme volumina illa preclara de animalibus condidit ; que ame collecta in arctum, cum iis que ignoraverat, queso ut legentes boni consulant, in universis rerum nature operibus, medioque clarissimi regum omnium desiderio, cura nostra breviter peregrinantes.
 * N.H. VIII. 17. Bip. The passage has been transcribed in the foregoing note.